Al Jazeera not to broadcast gunman film

Paris, March 27, 2012

Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera said on Tuesday it had decided not to broadcast video footage of three deadly shootings in France filmed by an Al Qaeda-inspired gunman using a camera strapped to his body.

"Al Jazeera will not air video of French shootings," the news channel said in a headline on its website.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy had urged television channels to refrain from showing the film, a copy of which Al Jazeera received at its Paris bureau late on Monday on a memory stick mailed last week from Toulouse as police laid siege to gunman Mohamed Merah.

An employee at Al Jazeera's Paris newsroom told Reuters the network had decided there was no information in the footage that was not already in the public domain and that broadcasting it would have breached its code of ethics. - Reuters